President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, pleaded guilty Thursday to tax evasion charges, avoiding a trial that would have exposed sordid details of his past spending on strippers and drugs as his father serves his final months in the White House amid the presidential election.
The president’s son pleaded guilty as potential jurors in his trial gathered in a federal courtroom in Los Angeles. Earlier in the day, prosecutors had initially rejected a surprise attempt by his lawyers to obtain an Alford plea, which would have allowed him to plead guilty while maintaining his innocence.
Hunter Biden, 54, later in the afternoon decided to plead guilty. He now faces sentencing on December 16 on a series of tax fraud and evasion charges that carry a maximum sentence of 17 years in prison and a fine of up to $1 million.
Defense attorney Abbe Lowell told reporters outside the courthouse that Hunter Biden had courageously pleaded guilty to spare his family the humiliation of a prosecution that he said went beyond the normal scope of tax cases.
“Like millions of Americans, Hunter was a late filer and payer of his taxes,” Lowell said. “Unlike those millions of Americans, he was criminally prosecuted for his failures that occurred at the height of his drug and alcohol addiction, and which he rectified by paying his delinquent taxes in full, with interest and penalties, years before he was charged.”
Earlier in the day, White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre declined to comment on Hunter Biden’s guilty plea, but said the president still has no plans to pardon his son or commute any sentence.
Mr Biden, 81, has said he would not take any action to spare his son a conviction or prison sentence, but that was before he withdrew from the presidential race.
“It’s no, it’s still no,” said Ms. Jean-Pierre.
U.S. District Court Judge Mark Scarsi accepted Biden’s plea to nine counts, including three felonies, related to prosecutors’ evidence that he failed to pay $1.4 million in taxes even as he led an extravagant lifestyle that included sports cars, prostitutes and drugs.
Prosecutors, armed with a mountain of evidence against him, rejected his attempt to plead guilty to the Alford method.
“I want to make this very clear: The United States opposes an Alford plea,” said U.S. Attorney Leo Wise, a member of special counsel David Weiss’s team. “Hunter Biden is not innocent. Hunter Biden is guilty. He is not allowed to plead guilty under special conditions.”
By pleading guilty at the last minute, Hunter Biden avoided his second criminal trial in just a few months.
He was convicted in June in Delaware of three felony counts related to a gun he purchased in 2018, and faces sentencing on that conviction in November.
The tax trial was expected to shed light on his lucrative overseas business dealings, which Republicans say were made possible by his father’s involvement during his tenure as vice president and after he left office in 2017. They accuse his father of helping Hunter Biden and his business associates, along with other members of the Biden family, rake in more than $20 million in deals with China, Russia, Ukraine and other countries.
Mr. Biden has denied having affairs with his son but has repeatedly expressed support and concern for his well-being, sometimes framing Hunter Biden’s problems as a struggle with addiction that is all too familiar to other families.
The sordid details of Hunter Biden’s troubles have clouded Mr. Biden’s reelection campaign. House Republicans, who have been leading an impeachment inquiry into Mr. Biden over the dealings, released a report in August concluding that Mr. Biden acted corruptly in helping his family profit from his powerful position as vice president.
Hunter Biden’s guilty plea came after the judge issued preliminary rulings unfavorable to the defense, including rejecting a defense expert proposed to testify on addiction.
Judge Scarsi, who was appointed to the post by former President Donald Trump, also placed some restrictions on what jurors would be allowed to hear about the traumatic events that Hunter Biden’s family, friends and attorneys say led to his drug addiction.
The judge barred attorneys from linking his drug addiction problems to the 2015 death of his brother Beau Biden from cancer, or to the car crash that killed his mother and sister when he was a toddler.
The indictment alleges that Hunter Biden lived lavishly while flouting his tax obligations, spending his money on things like strippers and luxury hotels — “in short, everything but his taxes.”
Biden’s lawyers have asked Judge Scarsi to block prosecutors from highlighting details of his spending that they say constitute “defamation of character,” including payments to strippers or pornographic websites. The judge said in court papers that he would maintain “strict control” over the presentation of potentially salacious evidence.
• This article is based in part on news agency reports.
washingtontimes
